Did I Just Feel a Sprinkle?

Am I the only person who has noticed these two inconsistent facts? 1. Since taking office, Barack Obama has consistently made stupid and obvious mistakes with regard to both major and minor issues, and one thing he has done may turn out to have catastrophic results. 2. Obama worshipers are more convinced than ever that he is The One.

Odd.

I thought I would expand a little on yesterday’s post about the real estate deal. Without bogging down in details, it goes like this. I inherited an interest in a little piece of commercial property. Some relatives with shares in the land need money; some don’t. Some really like to sell property; some don’t. There have always been conflicts regarding the disposition of pieces of property we own in common. There has never been any possibility that we would keep all the land and manage it and profit from it; it’s not even worth discussing. It would clearly be the intelligent thing to do, but you can’t herd cats.

When talk of selling this piece started, I was disturbed. It generates a little income. It’s in a great location. It’s in a place where flat land is rare and valuable, so it’ s not like there are a lot of properties like it. And I was concerned about the motivations and judgment of family members who wanted to get rid of it.

Nonetheless, I think the US is headed for a depression or deep recession, followed by a permanently lowered standard of living. We have never had the problems we face today. We have never had hungry, capable competitors like China and India, with their own vast internal markets and an endless supply of cheap, well-educated, grateful, eager labor. There is no reason why we should continue to lead the world economically. And we have aborted millions of babies, and we are getting into all sorts of disgusting religions, and we are proud and downright gross, and we are helping cut up Israel, so unless the Bible is nonsense, we should expect serious economic problems.

So while I like the idea of holding onto good land, I think unemployment is going to shoot up, businesses are going to close, commercial properties are going to be vacant, and we may continue to experience deflation. It’s hard to say, because the Fed needs to print money to cover the insane Bush/Obama Incompetence and Laziness Encouragement Plan. On the whole, however, I think cash is going to be a great thing to have over the next few years, and it’s probably a good time to sell commercial real estate, unless you have it leased to someone solvent.

There was disagreement about how to handle the sale. I thought it would be smart to divide the property. There are no comparable sales to speak of in the area where the property lies, so you can inflate the price of a piece of land by selling one part at a high price and then using the high price as leverage when you negotiate the prices of remaining pieces. But no one else in the family thought this was a good idea. They wanted to sell, period.

I was afraid that if I pushed my viewpoint, I would cause such conflict that relationships would be damaged. As a Christian, I realized this would be wrong. When you are confronted with obstinance and bad thinking, you may have to give way and trust God to fix it. For example, say your daughter wasn’t elected captain of the cheerleading squad, and the girl who got the position is a fat skeeze with no talent, not that you are judgmental or envious. You can’t firebomb the other girl’s house. You have to accept what happened and attack with prayer and faith.

So I restrained myself and did not push. I was afraid the other partners would jump at a crummy offer, just to get the cash, but I resolved to trust God rather than get in their faces. And I reminded myself that I might be wrong, and they might be right.

Well, the negotiations have taken place. We wanted X as a minimum price for the whole thing. The buyers can’t pay X. But they can pay a nice sum for part of the land, and they want an option on the rest, and if they buy it all, we’ll get about 1.6X. That’s just crazy. The most logical expectation was a miserable offer for the whole package. But the buyers are happy, and we’re happy, and unless there is some catch I don’t know about, I’m all for the deal.

So look what appears to be happening. I managed to control myself, and in the end, aren’t we getting the result I wanted in the first place?

Here’s another thing. One thing I prayed for was that my interest would be separated from everyone else’s. Why? For the same reason I would not date a non-Christian. Because partnering with people who don’t believe is a bad idea. They lead you into acts that are contrary to God’s will. They interfere with your blessings. So a sale is a good thing, because it separates my money, so I will be free to dispose of it as I see fit. I don’t have to worry about my relatives voting to rent the property to a whorehouse or something.

We’ll see if it works out. I’m assuming I understand the facts correctly.

Incidentally, some people think my gloomy assessment of the future of our country is unjustified. Some guy linked to my blog, called me “asshat,” and suggested I move to China. And his intelligent argument for the continued prosperity of America was the well-known title of a song made famous in a South Park movie featuring puppets. It’s always good to hear an opposing view which is clearly based on logic.

Some people think I’m unpatriotic for pointing out that God may be judging our nation, and that we may well be on our way to Second World status. They think pumping their fists and yelling “USA! USA!” will somehow put us back on top. But that’s exactly the attitude that put our economy in the toilet. When people said UAW workers were paid too much, and that the auto industry would fail, the autoworkers said, “USA! USA!” Now they’re saying “SOS! SOS!” and “OMG! OMG!” And soon they’ll be saying these things at the welfare office. The handouts are not going to save them. When your rowboat has a hole in it the size of a basketball, you don’t bail. You take it out of the water and patch the hole. The Big Three still have all the problems they had before two of them chose to become charity recipients, and they will continue to fail. Why would anyone expect them to succeed?

It’s just like Pajamas Media. I said it was a stupid idea, and people said I was a jerk, and they said I was too dumb to appreciate the genius of the PJs, and they quit talking to me, and they quit linking to my blog. Then PJM failed, exactly as I and the other non-sheep predicted, and Roger Simon sent all the member bloggers an email telling them they were off what he later described as “the dole”! Yes, yes, I was the enemy of conservatism. I was “the evil in the periphery”; that’s the funniest thing I was called. But who was right? Me or the cheerleaders?

Anyway, to get back to the economy…let’s get it through our heads. We didn’t become rich and powerful because we’re the master race. We are not better than foreigners. If we were, they wouldn’t come here penniless, out-compete us, and end up owning our businesses. There is nothing special about Americans. Absolutely nothing. Our educational system is second-rate. We are not the world’s hardest workers. The Bell Curve guys claim Asians are smarter than we are. We only did well because God helped us, and when he stops, we will stop doing well. That’s not unpatriotic. It’s truth. And once again, as it was in the PJ story, people like me are not the problem, any more than spots on an X-ray are the problem when you have cancer. Touch up the spots; the problem remains.

In the Bible, there were prophets who always said Israel and Judah were going to prosper. The kings and the people did all sorts of horrible things, and then the true prophets told them they were in deep trouble. So they called on the false prophets–the “patriots”–and the false prophets beat up the real prophets and said everything was going to be fine. It was after an episode like this that the king of Babylon took the king of Judah captive, murdered his sons while he watched, had him held down while his eyes were gouged out, and took him and a bunch of other Jews to Babylon in chains.

I’ll bet there were Jews listening to the false prophets, pumping their fists and yelling “JU-DAH! JU-DAH!”

As for moving to China, I don’t think it will be necessary. China is coming here. About half of it is in my garage. And I’m typing on some of it right now, while I read the words on yet another piece of it.

I wrote that without checking, and then I turned over my keyboard and looked. Sure enough: “Made in China.”

While I’m walking down this path, I’ll mention one other thing. A commenter scolded me for thinking the success of my gardening efforts was connected to my behavior as a Christian. I can’t figure that out. Open a Bible. See what it says about people who behave. Your crops will do well. Grapes, wheat, corn, whatever. “Running over.” “Abundance.” “Plenty.” It’s not figurative language, either. Not exclusively. It really does refer to things you plant. And you can look at Joel or Numbers 28 to see what happens to the things you plant, when you aren’t living right.

I bring this up because I checked on my yard today. For a long time, I could not get anywhere with fruit, and it didn’t seem to matter what I did to help things grow. Today I was shocked by what I saw. A ponkan tree which I thought I had wiped out sprouted blossoms unexpectedly, and I’m going to have tangerines. My older tangerine tree, which I nearly killed, has little fruit on it. My key limes are sprouting blossoms which I did not foresee. My cara cara has so many tiny fruit on it, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut a bunch off to keep them from killing it. My lychee is covered in blossoms. Even my pathetic tangelo tree is getting ready to bear. And get this: I found fruit on a MALE papaya tree. Is that even possible? I think my tree is gay. The other trees have produced one papaya after another, and this one has just generated doomed blossoms, but now it has fruit on it. And I have all sorts of little Persian limes on the way. My sole surviving tomato plant has no blossoms, but suddenly it’s very healthy, which is a near-impossibility here.

My lantana bushes, which I bought because they reminded me of Israel, are exploding with flowers. Even the weakest one, which I was worried about. I think it’s going to do well from now on. And my mango trees are lush and healthy, and there are a lot of little mangoes on them.

I think when you say God doesn’t affect little things like this, in effect, you’re saying God doesn’t do anything at all, which is what most Christians really believe. But if God is God, he does things, right? Isn’t that common sense? I think people develop a weird, hands-off picture of God because it enables them to keep believing in him when their prayers consistently go unanswered. You pray and pray, and nothing happens, and you say, “That’s okay, because God is really more of a big-picture guy, and he’s very busy running the world. It’s only natural that he would have no interest in my problems.”

Whatever. When I pray, I want to see some action.

Incidentally, I would be interested in knowing whether I’m the only one who has the impression that a lot of Christians are getting interested in guns, tools, and growing things. It’s crazy, but I keep running into people who have these interests. I have to wonder if we’re being prepared for something. Maybe when times get really bad, it will be good to have a bunch of tools, plenty of firearms and ammunition, and food growing on your land.

Here’s something crazy: my grandfather left me a big heavy bag of silver. He was a judge, and there was a toll road through the counties he served, and when we went off silver coins, he used his clout to get the toll collectors to save silver for him, and he bought it. Very odd thing to do; he was not a big metals investor. And now here I am, with bad times probably on the way, sitting on a hefty pile of silver coins. Is there a reason for it?

That’s all for this morning. I have to buy some steel and some welding gas, and I have a bunch of ideas for mounting tools on roller carts. Time is wasting.

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